Night
by Eladamri Dael'Oyos
Summary: Ch. 4 finally up! Yes, kage, i did get the name from BrotherMarine Shran. I believe he was the first to review the story. Love you guys.
1. Laughter

An unearthly wind whipped across the battlefield, pushing aside the whirling sand and uncurtaining the advancing forms. Inexorable metal shades, their blasphemous weapons pulsing with energy, they strode through the storm. Racing ahead of the massive phalanxes of deathly infantry, wraiths with hands of blades melded into the terrified lines of the Emperor's Hammer, leaving a red cloud in their wake. As the sky convulsed above the screaming battle-hell, a massive shape poured from the heavens. Settling above the ancient metal creatures, it coalesced into a great form, a humanoid, screaming face and a nebulous body. Talons crusted with grave-dirt tested the air, waiting for the appropriate moment. The other hand, clasped around a vast scythe, clenched and unclenched in anticipation.

And

Then

It stared straight at the ranks of trembling Guardsmen. A maddening scream ripped itself from a sinewy chest, and it launched itself into the terror. Its gaseous lower half appeared to engulf it and it hit the wildly shooting chaos that was the Imperial Guard like a black comet, scattering men this way and that. A series of deathly, gleeful roars twisted from the darkened bloodbath as spikes of light screamed from the weapons of the skeletal warriors. Those caught in these enlightening rays made barely a sound as they collapsed in a heap, surrounded by a scarlet mist.

Amid this, the darkness known as Nightbringer rejoiced. This world would soon be his.


	2. Realization

The Librarian sat stone-still, deep in thought. His consciousness expanded over the vast wastes between the stars, and beheld the usual horrors consigned to the planets of the Emperor's Imperium. Titanic, milling hive worlds, dead worlds whistling with the moans of those long passed from the Carrion Lord's light. World upon world was bathed in the golden radiance of the Emperor's interest, laced with a web of warp routes and portals.

One of these worlds was Rathama V, outermost bastion of the Rathama section. The Librarian had heard of the strange goings-on on the necropolis-world, so he paused and began to read the powerful psychic channel that originated there.

_Static, nothing but static. Undertoned with a sound like the wails of the dead. More static._

**I AM NIGHTBRINGER. I AM BECOME DEATH. STAY AWAY.**

The horrified Librarian drew himself out of the psychic currents with a scream. As he toppled over backwards, he heard a knock at the door of his cell. Righting himself, he said, "Enter."

A scout's young face poked itself through the doorway with a look of concern. "Brother Shran, are you well?"

"Yes, yes," said the Librarian called Shran. "ran into a snag in the psi-channels. All is as it should be."

The recruit smiled and nodded. "Always is with you, lord. Good day." The head pulled back.

Staring at infinity for a moment, the psyker activated the vox-bead on his larynx with a thought.

"Captain Fisk."

_"Aye?"_

"Get in here. Something is amiss on Rathama V."

On a psychic channel not used for centuries, death himself conversed with his retainer.

**THE HUMANS SHALL SOON BE HERE. BEHOLD, THE SOUL-FEAST DRAWS NIGH. **

_Yea, mighty. The warriors of Shala shall not disappoint._

**BE WARY, LORD SHALA. THEY COME WREATHED IN METAL. THE SERVENTS OF THE DEAD ONE ARE ON THE HORIZON.**

_I have fought in your name for centuries, mighty. The warriors sleep, but I may rally them to your standard as soon as you compel me to._

**GOOD. STAY YOUR HAND, ANCIENT ONE. MY HUNGER WILL CALL YOU SOON ENOUGH.**


	3. Ages

Captain Marius Fisk of the Blood Angels had to yell above the roar of the wind as it sped past the drop pod. Around him, braced for impact, were fifteen of his Battle Brothers and Librarian Shran. The psyker, as usual, had a pensive look about him as he routed Fisk's orders to the swarm of pods around them.

"Groups seven and ten will fan out around the aforementioned tomb, stay alert. Groups six, eight and eleven will enter the tomb accompanied by Brother Shran. All others and I will stay on high alert in battle positions on the surrounding cliffs. Clear?"

Shran's voice was deep as he answered. "Aye."

"Right," Fisk snapped into action as the roar of the wind stopped. "impact in five! Brace!"

There were several seconds of utter silence, and then the world ended.

The pod shook as if in an earthquake; a wall of force moved up through it and rocked the Marines. Rocks pinged and clunked against the walls and the heat from successive landings was unbearable. The Space Marines waited, heads down, for several seconds until they heard silence. With a pneumatic hiss, the exit ramp lowered and the Marines were admitted to Rathama V.

They had landed on a plateau high above the landscape; the violent touchdown had taken away a sizable portion of it. The wind was constant, and Shran recognized its movement through the craggy peaks surrounding them as the reedy wailing he had heard during his psychic foray. The ground was covered in several inches of very fine black ash, swirling about their feet and whispering away on the breeze. While they took this all in, they were more amazed by the edifice below them.

Sprawled out over the plain under them was a testament to the eventual death of the galaxy. A vast pyramidal structure, crawling with the golden hieroglyphs of a collapsed empire, sat broodingly as it had for countless millennia. Its giant green stones pulsed with a sickly green energy, mimicked by the double lines of obelisks that formed the tomb's thoroughfare.

"All groups categorized generically," said Fisk, "fan out here and take up watch on the others. Everyone else, go about the tasks assigned to you. Meet back here in three solar cycles."

Librarian Shran and the two squads accompanying him moved off down the loose, rocky slope to the pyramid. After a large amount of slipping and sliding, they reached the beginning of the funerary road. As they set off down its quarter-mile length, Shran felt a palpable sense of dread seep into his psychic senses. He dispelled it, but it was replaced by a feeling of nausea that persisted to the tomb's threshold. Upon reaching the massive stone that blocked off the entrance, the squad led by Shran stepped back as their Librarian set to work. The others fanned out among the pillars, watching the door, hills and plain for any sign of movement.

Shran faced the door and opened his psychic eye. A barrage of images from the deep past assaulted him: Gold-robed priests carrying staffs that pulsated with emerald fire. Phalanxes of gun-brandishing warriors admitted through the vast door. Feelings of fear, suffering, reverence and anticipation blended together in a macabre mix.

And one.

A priest. Higher status than all the others, assigned to care for the slumbering god-thing that waited in the twisting darkness. Armed with a staff that was more than two meters long and sent a light into the sky as its wielder entered the tomb. He reached out and touched a stone just outside the threshold. As the doors closed forever before him, he turned and looked Shran straight in the eye.

"I see you."

With a gasp, the sweating Librarian was snapped back to the present. As he had careened forwards through time, he thought he had caught a  
_Shala  
_name in the confusion. He shook his head and turned towards the squad arranged before him. "I know," he said.

He turned and advanced towards the wall, his fingers brushing the stones as he sought the key. As he reached the final stone before the door, he found it, almost completely eroded by the constant wind.

A skull had been carved there long ago. He sent the psychic command for opening to the entity there. It honored his request, and the titanic stone block ground inward to admit the Space Marines to the maze.

Deep in the stagnant darkness, the armies of the Death Priest stirred.


	4. Light the Fires

Brother-Librarian Shran and his small retinue moved cautiously down the silent pyramid's entrance hall. The only sound after the door closed was that of their metallic breathing through the frowning grilles on their helmets. The clink of gun metal and the tiny, pneumatic hisses of their armor whispered down the corridor before them, as did the slight crackle of the flamer wielded by a Marine called Orphes. As they advanced down the dark tunnel, fleeting shadows appeared in the corner of each man's eye before racing up into the darkness near the corridor's roof. The golden hieroglyphs on the walls seemed to have a life all their own, writhing as they were illuminated by the Marines' armor lamps.

Upon reaching the end of the long first passage, the Marines found themselves in a large, circular room where passages branched off to many different locations within the pyramid. Shran halted them in the chamber's center.

"Pair up," he said, "each pair takes a corridor. Report what you find. Keep the vox-net open."

So saying, he motioned for a marine called Andas to join him. Slung over Andas' shoulder and carried at his hip was a heavy bolter, the Emperor's holy weapon against all threats. It had been forged by a tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the technical masters of Mankind, at one of their great bastions on windswept Mars. It had gone through many sacred rites to ensure its deadliness before it was given to the Blood Angels and eventually passed down to Andas. He now carried it with the ultimate care and pride.

As the Marine pairs trooped off in different directions, Andas and Shran took the passage directly in front of them. As they entered this new, shorter corridor, a palpable feeling of dread and despair came over Shran and muted his sixth sense.

"Anyone else feel that?" he voxed.

"Yes, Brother-Librarian," the reply was from the pair of Marines who had taken the passage alongside theirs.

They moved on, trying to ignore the low whispers that nagged at the edges of their minds as they advanced down the corridor. Shran's finger tightened on the trigger of his bolt pistol more than once, but he told himself to keep faith in Him on Earth and never trust anything that xenos-tech spawned.

The passage widened and soon they found themselves in a large, square chamber, along with the Marine pair that had responded to Shran's call earlier. He was pleased to see that Brother Orphes, still holding the flamer, made up one half of the pair.

Despite the chamber's apparent neglect, eerie green fires blazed high in brass sconces all along the walls. These flames illuminated a huge stone chest that sat on a slightly raised dais in the chamber's center. The horrible, muting presence seemed to emanate from this vault.

"Assume defensive positions around the walls," ordered Shran, opening his psychic senses as best he could, "I will see what calls us here."

He advanced toward the chest. Each step he took was a fight through turbulent psychic seas, waves of dulling force hitting him in a terrible melody as he moved forward.

Finally, he reached the massive vault. Still combating the pulsing energies, he removed a metal gauntlet and laid his bare hand on the cold lid.

**I AM SHALA. BEHOLD THE BURIAL MOUNT OF DEATH'S PRIEST.**

Shran drew back, gasping, and toppled to the floor. He was about to dart back up but stopped short as a tiny metallic skittering reached his ears. Readying his bolt pistol as he regained his footing, he crept back to where the three Marines were arranged.

"Andas," whispered Shran into the green-tinged gloom, "ready the bolter. All except Brother Orphes, fire for the ceiling on my mark."

There was a low humming that bounced off the chamber walls as Andas warmed up the heavy bolter's firing mechanisms, "Ready."

"Fire on my mark," said Shran as the tiny skittering he had heard earlier increased in volume near the room's ceiling.

"Three."

The noise converged on a spot above the Marines.

"Two."

A dull, almost imperceptible white noise sounded amid the unseen swarm.

"One."

The white noise increased in volume.

Shran prayed as he tightened his finger on the bolt pistol's trigger.

"Mark!"

All hell broke loose.

The clatter of bolter fire jumped off the walls, followed suit by the roar of Andas' weapon. The rounds ripped into the ceiling stone, knocking out bits of a swarm of slithering, beetle-like constructs. The holes that were made were soon filled in by more of the skittering xenos. As the Marines fired, the swarm consolidated itself and arced down towards them. Shran acted quickly.

"Orphes! Now!"

The room was suddenly lit up as Orphes' flamer blasted to life. The swarm met the jet of fire and battled with it, seemingly stymied. Then, as the pressure of millions became too hard to fight against, the swarm began gaining ground.

Advancing hard against the flame, the swarm did nothing else until it was about ten feet above the Marines. Then, slowly, dreadfully, it flowed around the fire and onto the Space Marines.

Shran's armor sensors, fed directly into his brain, went off the scale. The beetle-things worked their way into the chinks in the Marines' armor, and the straining of ceramite could be heard plainly above the din. Feeling the things begin to bore into his skin, Shran focused as best he could and tapped into his psychic sense.

Despite the many things trying to stop it, the world went silent for a moment. The Marines' fire beat a strobing staccato against the walls. The swarm poured silently and inexorably downward. Death laughed.

And, amid it all, the Blood Angels Librarian _pushed._

Sound flowed suddenly back in, deafening the Marines as a physical shockwave radiated outward from their Psyker Battle-Brother. The shockwave caught every one of the beetle constructs, sweeping them up and smashing them with incredible force into the walls. Outside, a massive shockwave ripped through the ground, moving outwards from the pyramid. The insectoid assailants fell silent.

Shran had fallen to his knees, blood pouring from his eyes and nose, only to be instantly clotted by his supercharged system. He panted, and the Marines with him thanked their Emperor.

"Must…tell…Dante…" was all that Shran could get out before he collapsed to the floor. The Marines heaved him onto their shoulders, bearing him away to face the Son of Sanguinius.

**SHALA. I EXPECTED BETTER OF YOU.**

**THAT WAS BUT A TEST, LORD. THE ONLY REAL THREAT AMONG THEM IS THE ONE THAT CONFRONTED ME.**

**DO NOT BE SO SURE, SHALA. READY YOUR WARRIORS FOR BATTLE.**

**THE PRIEST OF DEATH SERVES, O LORD.**


End file.
